


A Lady In Paris

by mrstater



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Honeymoon, Married Couple, Paris (City), Pregnancy, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:33:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1913: After a rushed autumn courtship and wedding, a honeymoon to Paris gives Mary and Richard the opportunity to see a bit more of the world, and even more of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Girl in Black](https://archiveofourown.org/works/311393) by [mrstater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater). 



****_14 February, 1913  
Ritz London Hotel_  
  
Before Mary so much as cracks an eye open the morning after the wedding, she knows her husband awoke before her.  
  
"Didn't I say you'd be catching up on the evening papers while I slept?" she says hoarsely, rubbing the crust from her lashes as she rolls onto her back; the light from the bedside lamp glares even through closed eyelids.   
  
The crinkle of newsprint and the creak of box springs precedes his voice, sounding near to her ear as Richard eases down the pillows to lay beside her.  
  
"I read those hours ago." His words are a nuzzle against her cheek, tickling her ear. "I'm on to the morning editions now."  
  
"Hours?"   
  
Mary's groggy mind struggles to keep pace with her husband, though he can scarcely have slept; she feels newly weighted down by his hand resting heavily on her stomach--her _bare_ stomach, the chiffon skirt of her nightgown having hiked up around her waist as she slept. She opens her eyes to see his face blurred but that, she realises, is due to his close proximity to her nose as he kisses the tip.   
  
He smells of fresh strong coffee and a recent cigarette, and it occurs to her that she never thought about his smoking habits before now. What does his morning routine involve when he's not rushing off to the office, a slice of toast in hand as he climbs into his Rolls Royce? Of course, he likely has no other, and will have to make up new ones as they go. As will she.  
  
"What time is it?" she asks.   
  
She expects him to roll over and retrieve his watch from the bedside table and check. Instead, he tightens his embrace, hooking one leg over hers as he mumbles that he doesn't know--sometime after nine thirty, he thinks--and kisses her lips. Mary keeps them pressed firmly together, only returning a peck, thinking that _her_ new morning routine must involve an earlier wake up to brush her teeth. Richard seems to disagree, however, his mouth insistent on hers, the tip of his tongue coaxing her lips apart. The mattress dips beneath his knees as they straddle either side of hers.   
  
Although she felt his arousal against her in the night--more than once--and in the dark she responded with bold touches of her own, a flush prickles over her skin at the press of it through his dressing gown. His energy is impressive, and she is unsure if she can match it, returning his kisses tentatively. After a moment, however, she realises that there is no urgency to the movement of his mouth upon hers, that the stroke of his thumb at the edge of her breast is feather-light, that his hips do not nudge against hers for more. In fact Richard seems almost lazy, which is a quality she never would have imagined him capable of. She returns his languid passion, running her fingers through the curling ends of his hair, hooking one leg over the back of his thigh to allow his weight to settle a little more heavily against her. She could go on like this for some time--and she loses all sense of how long they do--until her stomach emits a loud, churning gurgle against Richard’s that makes him pull his lips from hers and push off her. The pleasant prickling flush now burns up her neck and into her cheeks like wildfire.   
  
"I'm sorry,” he says. “You must be starving. Or..." One fair eyebrow quirks on his forehead in an uncertain expression. "It isn't morning sickness, is it?"  
  
Mary shakes her head on the pillows, avoiding his gaze. "I'm past all that, thankfully, though I do feel better if I eat sooner rather than later. And...I don't think I managed to eat much at all yesterday."  
  
Richard's arm moves across her chest as he cups her chin, turning her face to his. "You are entitled to breakfast first.”   
  
He leans in to peck her reassuringly on the lips. It has the desired effect, and Mary's fingers slip beneath the collar of his dressing gown--a Liberty paisley print in autumnal greens, browns, and golden hues--to stroke the warm skin of his neck.   
  
" _First_?"   
  
His eyes glitter, his desire evident, and Mary’s own arousal grows as she comes a little more awake and notices the shadow of stubble across his chin and cheeks, lending an unexpectedly attractive ruggedness to his usually polished sharp features.   
  
"You'll want fuel for our morning activities. Especially since you're eating for two."   
"Yes, let's blame it on the baby, shall we?"  
  
"I'm sure it won't be the first time.”   
  
Richard pats her stomach, then pushes himself upright, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, slides his feet into the slippers placed strategically and tidily on the floor beside it. He picks up the receiver of the bedside telephone, and Mary retreats to the _en suite_ bathroom to tend necessities and make herself a little more presentable, self-conscious again as she hears Richard's muffled tones from the suite beyond, ordering their breakfast. At the same time she is grateful that he is not silent, for the sound of his own voice may deafen him to, or at least distract him from, the morning rituals she's accustomed to performing in private. Marriage, it seems, brings a world of new intimacies beyond the sexual.   
  
As she brushes her teeth and runs a comb through her tangled hair, inexpertly let down by Richard last night instead of Anna, Mary studies her reflection intently in the mirror, searching it for some new sign of maturity, or that she is at least up to the challenge of his experience. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she plaits her hair over her shoulder before deciding to leave it down, a small portion pulled back from her face with a diamond barrette--too much, she's sure, but a ribbon seems childish and her husband will be pleased to see her make use of one of his extravagant gifts.   
  
If he heard anything embarrassing from the bathroom Richard gives no indication of it as she re-joins him. He glances up with a quick smile at the demure pink bed jacket she has donned over the deep vee neckline of her nightdress’ sheer georgette bodice.   
  
"There's coffee on your nightstand if you like," he tells her, returning his attention to shuffling sections of various broadsheets about on the bed. "Tea's coming with breakfast."  
  
She settles herself next to him, cradling her coffee cup in her hands as she peers over his shoulder, suddenly more interested in the morning news than she ever has been as she remembers the wedding. "Did we get a good spread?"  
  
"You think I'd settle for a _good_ spread?"  
  
"I beg your pardon. Did we get a spread worthy of royalty?"  
  
"The write-up of your trousseau rivals Consuelo Vanderbilt's."  
  
"And I didn't even have to marry a duke." Mary reaches for that page eagerly, though as she scans the minutely detailed descriptions of corsets, chemises, petticoats, and drawers printed in bold typeset on crisp newsprint, she remembers suddenly the tour Richard gave her and Aunt Rosamund of the _Daily Telegram_ facilities, when he announced above the roar of the double-octuple presses that his paper has a circulation of over one million.   
  
"Heavens.” The newspaper flutters to her lap as she leans back against the pillows and gulps her coffee to counteract her light-headedness. "Over one million people reading about my underclothes."  
  
"I'm sure not all of them bother with the society pages."  
  
"Well then, if it's only a quarter of a million, I shan't be self-conscious," she says, and he chuckles low, though she's unsure he's entirely paying attention, intent upon the paper through which he pages, perusing for more articles about the wedding. "Your mother's right, you know."  
  
 _That_ gets his attention. "My mother?"  
  
"You're a show-off. You like the idea of everyone in London knowing how many corsets your bride has and that they're trimmed with Valenciennes lace."  
  
Richard doesn't deny it--in fact, his dimples and the deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes confirm it.   
  
"Did you say Valentine?" he asks.  
  
"No." Mary quirks an eyebrow. "Is that a joke, or ought I to be worried about your French with us bound for Paris tomorrow?"  
  
"I must have misheard you because of this." His tone seems almost evasive, but the newspaper he shows Mary thoroughly distracts her from suspicion.   
  
_PUBLISHER WINES AND DINES VALENTINE BRIDE_ , the headline reads, followed by a series of pictures and blurbs about the late-night party at the Cave of the Golden Calf. Allusions are made to the foreign influence of Mary’s American relatives, Richard’s family from Edinburgh, and the Austrian-born nightclub owner, but she doubts any of them would take references to their un-Englishness as the slight intended.   
  
"And we thought we were being so clever by marrying on the thirteenth," Richard says. "It never occurred to me the festivities might carry over to the day itself. Or that my competitors would capitalise on it."  
  
"What _will_ this do to your reputation? Everyone in the country will know you're secretly a romantic."  
  
She's teasing, of course, but Richard's glance holds genuine alarm. "And you."  
  
"Well..." Mary scuffs her thumb over a shadowy image of them dancing the Argentine tango, snapped by some photographer she never noticed because of her focus only on Richard. "I suppose it's preferable to a card?"   
  
Though she says it in the blasé manner she's perfected to a science, if she’s honest about the one moment from the whole of their wedding day she could have captured on film, even above any of the posed portraits or even the candid moments of her entering St Paul's on Papa's arm or exiting on Richard's or cutting the cake at the Ritz, it would be the dance. It encapsulates everything that characterises their relationship--their confidence in themselves and in each other, the mutual disdain for the rules of society which drew them together in the first place, and of course the love and desire that bound them--and recreates that pivotal moment when she knew, beyond all doubt, that she wanted him.   
  
Any uncertainty she felt upon awakening that she wanted him now gives way to a surge of desire which she imagines must be on a level with those that made Richard wake her in the night. But as she lays aside the newspaper, touching his face with the intention of drawing him in for a kiss, Richard lifts a hand to ruffle his hair in back, meeting her eye with an almost schoolboy sheepishness.   
  
"As a matter of fact, I do have a card for you."  
  
Mary's huff of frustration turns into a puff of laughter as he climbs out of bed and pads across the opulent hotel suite to the writing desk. She laughs harder, annoyance forgotten entirely, when he opens the briefcase lying on the surface. Only Richard Carlisle would bring a briefcase on his honeymoon and keep a Valentine card in it; when he asks what she finds so amusing she tells him so.   
  
He glances back over his shoulder, his features sloping sharply downward in profile. "It seemed a practical place to keep everything pertaining to the honeymoon," he says, taking out a pen. "My apologies if that bursts your romantic bubble."  
  
"You should be glad if it does. Though I think you might earn back a few romantic points by having the foresight to purchase a Valentine card in advance of our honeymoon."  
  
"In that case, I'll admit that I'm only just now writing a note to you in it."  
  
As he scratches away, bent over the desk rather than taking a seat in the Queen Anne chair tucked under it, Mary's appreciation of his backside is interrupted by a knock on the door of their suite. Richard remarks that will be breakfast and lays down his pen, striding through the door to the drawing room of their suite to answer it with no thought to being clothed in only a dressing gown while she, despite being quite properly dressed for a hotel in her _robe de chamber_ \--and the whole of London having read about her nightgowns, anyway--clutches the bedclothes over her chest for modesty. Until the glimpse of red envelope at the edge of the writing desk catches her eye.  
  
Leaning over the edge of the bed to see around the doorframe and ensure that Richard is still occupied in the other room, she throws back the covers and slips out of bed, hurrying on tip-toe across the room to pick up snatch the card. She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh; it struck her as singularly uncharacteristic that Richard would get her a Valentine at all, but the card he chose is even more so: a pastel watercolour depicts a golden-haired cherub driving a Model T while a brunette angel lounges in a backseat filled with fat red hearts.   
  
"I'd no idea Cupid was a motorist," she says, hearing the scuff of Richard's step on the carpet behind her, the hotel staff gone again.  
  
"Much more efficient than winged flight, I should think, with a figure like that."  
  
She turns the card over to read the message scrawled across the back: _From our first unchaperoned ride in the Silver Ghost, to my cross-country jaunt in the T, you've driven me_ \-- He'd got no further, due to the arrival of breakfast.   
  
Facing him, the curved back of the chair brushing the hem of her bed jacket, she says, "I hope you weren't planning to conclude this with _you've driven me mad since September, 1912._ "  
  
"I believe I had something in mind about how you've driven me down a rather bumpy road to love, but now that I hear it aloud it sounds so cloyingly sentimental that I think I won't complete that thought."   
  
"Wouldn't a telegram be more your usual style? _M STOP I WANT YOU TO BE STOP BE MINE STOP XX STOP R_?"   
  
"After the way you reacted the last time I sent you one?"  
  
"It wasn't the telegram I took issue with, but your oblivion to why I might."  
  
Richard's eyebrows draw together heavily above his hard eyes, but Mary is not intimidated.   
  
"For heaven's sake, Richard, I'm not trying to pick a fight with you less than a day into our marriage."  
  
"Saving it for a later date?" he retorts, but the corner of his mouth twitches upward and the lines of his face relax slightly.   
  
"Well--you did call it a _bumpy_ road to love."  
  
"I didn't actually write it down, so it’s not a direct quote." His smirk fades as the furrows on his forehead deepen again. "Don't you want me to smooth out whatever bumps I can, Mary? You said yourself, we didn't have much in the way of courtship."  
  
Her heart feels as if it is pressing against her ribs. "So you gave me a Valentine card."  
  
Richard glances away, his long fingers going up to tug again at the ends of his hair, as he nods. Mary steps toward him, covering his hand on his neck with hers. She lifts her face to take advantage of the angle at which his head is turned and kisses him at the base of his jaw. His stubble rasps over her lips.   
  
"I know I said your rough edges need smoothing, but I must admit I’m growing to like them."   
  
"Are you, now?"   
  
She smiles against his skin at the feel of his voice rumbling and of his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows.   
  
" _Mmm._ "   
  
He nudges against her, tilting his head to meet her mouth, but before he can she arches onto the balls of her feet to brush a kiss across his cheekbone.   
  
"The sharp lines, too."  
  
His cheek muscle flexes, and his grip on her hand tightens as his other hand settles on her hip.   
  
She kisses his ear. "And the bumps."   
  
This time when he moves to kiss her, she does not evade him, but allows him to capture her lips, her arms encircling his neck as his hand slips out from beneath hers at the back of his neck to grasp her by the hips. He leans into her as his tongue sweeps into her mouth, and her backside bumps against the desk.   
  
Richard murmurs an apology for taking her so literally, and to ask doesn’t she want breakfast first? When Mary replies that the bed is the other direction, he kisses her again as his hands move down from her hips to cup her bottom, lifting her off the ground--but _not_ , as she expects, to carry her across the room to the bed as he did last night; he perches her at the edge of the desk.   
  
A thought flits idly through her mind as her feet dangle off the floor that he can't really mean to make love to her atop a hotel writing desk, but then his hands slide out from beneath her bottom and push the ankle-length skirt of her nightgown up and she quickly realises that yes, he does mean to do exactly that. She can't fully envision how this will work, though Richard clearly knows what he is doing as he nudges her knees apart so he can stand between her bare thighs. Not wanting him to think she’s not up to speed, she grasps the belt of his dressing gown with one hand and with the other pushes it off his shoulder.   
  
If she was at all self-conscious about her own forwardness, the feeling vanishes when he leaves off kissing her again and she sees the rakish grin which tilts his lips and speaks plainer than any words how pleased he is by it. Further emboldened, Mary unties her bed jacket’s pink ribbon closure and slips out of it, but as she grasps the hem of her gown and starts to peel it off she becomes distracted by the hard planes of Richard's chest, the roll of his shoulders as he shrugs off dressing gown and, reflected in an oval mirror across the room, the ripple of his back muscles beneath his pale skin as the robe slides down to puddle at his feet with a swish of velvet. Only when his hands close over hers in her lap, gently prising her fingers from clutching her gown, does she divert her gaze.   
  
He lifts the nightdress over her waist and breasts, and Mary raises her arms to draw them out of the fluttery short sleeves. As the flimsy chiffon falls away, Richard's warm mouth covers the tip of one breast, his lips pulling at her nipple, while he cups the other in his hand, teasing with his thumb. Arching her back in response, her elbow knocks against something cold and metallic, followed by the sound of shattering glass.   
  
They fly apart at the sound, and Mary claps a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry at the sight of the stained glass shade of the desk lamp lying in glittering shards among the folds of her nightgown.   
  
"I suppose we'll be purchasing a new Tiffany lamp that will never grace our home," Richard remarks.   
  
"You'd best exercise a little bribery, or some enterprising Ritz employee will leak the next headline: _RAISED IN THE CAVE? AFTER NIGHT IN CLUB, CARLISLE AND BRIDE VANDALISE HOTEL._ "  
  
"God, you're good," Richard mumbles against her throat; his hands go around her waist, drawing her down the desk as he steps sideways to put a little more distance between his bare feet and the broken lamp. "Are you seeking employment? Only I think you'd make a top-notch society writer."  
  
"Reporting on what? Our torrid love life?" Mary trails her fingertips over his scalp, ruffling his fine hair as he kisses along her clavicles. "Tempting, but my current desk job doesn't allow time for breakfast as it is."   
  
There is no further conversation, though Richard does make a low wordless sound when she tilts his face up to hers and kisses him hard. His fingers dig into her bottom as he draws her to the edge of the desk, her heels into the backs of his knees as she hooks her legs around him when he presses into her.   
  
It isn’t as intimate as the intercourse they shared in the night, certainly. There are no tender embraces, the position requiring each of them to brace themselves with palms splayed across the desktop or grasping the edge, and the creaking of the desk beneath her weight and with Richard's rocking thrusts keeps Mary partly detached from the moment for fear their escapades will break more than just a lamp. Yet it is equally enjoyable, in its own way, the pure physicality oddly taking her back to the early days of their relationship, when the slightest touch of his fingers at her back, the lightest brush of his lips on her cheek, made it impossible for her to resist his advances as everyone said she ought.   
  
Was it the allure of sex that drew her to him in the beginning? A silly question, she supposes, in light of the fact that it was _she_ who instigated their illicit tryst. Of course, Richard saw that less as something illicit than simply enjoying the benefits of marriage a little early.   
  
Nevertheless, as he shudders against her on the desk, Mary's cry is as much an exclamation of relief as it is release, that for all Richard's promises to do things properly, the rebellious aspect of their relationship is not at an end simply because they are now wed in the eyes of God and most of England. Being Richard's wife required her to give up those old notions of marriage as a means to a title or an ancient estate, but with him she gains so much more: the chance to make a world on their own terms.   
  
Or destroy one, if the broken lamp is any indication.   
  
"Well," he says afterward, breathless and with trembling limbs drawing out the chair to sink down on, "what's that you said about our torrid love life?"  
  
"Quite." Mary brushes an errant lock of hair from his forehead. "But just wait till I've had breakfast."


	2. Parlez-vous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The revelation of an unexpected gap in Richard's knowledge tests just how well he and Mary can do together.

"Come now, Mary," Richard addresses her from the seat opposite her in the train compartment. "You can't mean to hold this against me for the duration of our train ride."  
  
"No, indeed," she replies, not looking up from her copy of _Lady Fair_ \--though not for the reason her new husband thinks.   
  
The channel ferry from Dover to Calais nauseated her--so badly, in fact, that she had to bolt to the powder room to be sick. In a true test of her acting skills, she retained her composure so Richard would not suspect her true purpose for visiting the toilets. It's too undignified, being ill on one's honeymoon, especially as she has always been a good sailor and knows the baby must have brought it on; the last thing she wants is for him to make her think more about it by doing everything in his power to relieve the affliction which will pass on its own. Already she is reasonably certain the worst is past--or will be, if she doesn't exacerbate the dizziness produced by the swaying train with any sudden movements of her own and avoids looking out at the windows at the blurring French countryside, glaringly resplendent with the midday sun on the snow.   
  
However, at the rattle of his newspaper, she looks up to see Richard fold and set his newspaper aside, then push to his feet as if to join her on her side of the carriage.   
  
Hastily she averts her gaze to the magazine in her lap and adds, affecting tones of disinterest, "I mean to hold it against you for the duration of our marriage."  
  
For a moment Richard stands arrested in his awkward hunched position at the centre of the of the train compartment before he resumes his seat, the cushion puffing air from some unseen hole in the upholstery.   
  
"Surely you overcame worse shortcomings to become my wife. My Dickensian origins."  
  
"Do you really qualify?" Mary pictures the boy version of Richard in the shadowy, yellowed photograph his mother brought to London for the wedding, all cheekbones beneath a mop of fair hair. "As the son of a printer and laundress, you were hardly standing in line with an empty bowl begging the workhouse master for more gruel."  
  
Richard ignores her and continues to enumerate on his flaws. "My Darwinian business ethics."  
  
"That I definitely won't dispute. Nor, I think, would Miss Swire." Their eyes meet across the car, and Mary sees the smirk that tugs at the corner of her lips mirrored on Richard's face. "Don't forget your dandified fashion _faux pas_. That gave me great pause."  
  
"Presumably you refer to the tweed incident."  
  
"You presume correctly," she replies, and Richard scowls. Satisfied, Mary returns her attention once more to her magazine.   
  
Before she gets further than re-reading the paragraph where she left off, however, Richard rises from his seat again, sliding his arm around her shoulders and nudging her over on the bench with his hip as he makes room for himself between her and the wall of the carriage. Any protest she thought to make is silenced as he nuzzles at her cheek, his lips finding the sensitive place where her earlobe meets her jaw, warm breath prickling up goosebumps on the back of her neck as he murmurs in husky tones.   
  
"My Don Juanian powers of seduction."  
  
"I seduced you," Mary says, pleased that she manages to sound stiffly aloof--even if it is most ironically because his kisses--and caresses, his other hand coming quite boldly to curl over her breast--made her catch her breath. "If you remember."  
  
With a sigh, Richard sits back, hands leaving her breast and shoulder. "And now you emasculate me. All because I don't speak bloody French."  
  
He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and takes out his silver plated cigarette case and lighter.   
  
"I thought I knew who I was marrying," Mary says. "Gauche, I was prepared for. But such gaps in your education?"   
  
He asks, cigarette clenched between his teeth as he lit it, "Would you have said _I do_ if you'd known?"  
  
"I admit it might have been a deal breaker."  
  
"Then how fortunate for me you were already pregnant."  
  
It is less fortunate for Mary, whose head begins to ache the instant the cigarette smoke assaults her sense of smell. Though she's proven sensitive to many aromas during her pregnancy, Richard's smoking hasn't troubled her since she got over her morning sickness. In fact she enjoyed the smell this very morning, when she woke at the hotel in Dover to him smoking beside her in bed as he read the paper. Still nauseated from the ferry ride, however, and now from the motion of the train, she's afraid she may be making another dash for the water closet. She doesn't ask him to stop; she never has before, and it will only arouse his suspicion if his smoking suddenly bothers her now.   
  
To distract herself from her nausea and headache, she focuses on her annoyance. Though they were only bantering about Richard's ignorance of the French language, part of her meant every word of it. Still reeling from the channel crossing, the last thing she was in the mood for was the discovery that Richard didn't know enough French to instruct the cab driver he hailed in Calais to take them to the railway station. Mary had to speak to him, and the man scarcely stopped talking all the way there--though he at least understood enough English so as not to mistake Richard's meaning when he asked him to please shut up. But at the station it was Mary who had to purchase their train tickets, and deal with the porters with regard to their baggage, and she will have to do it all over again--and more--in Paris.  
  
"Are you quite well?" Richard asks, and she lowers her hand to her lap, only now realising she has been pinching the bridge of her nose.   
  
"Quite--apart from my state of utter disbelief that you never to learnt French," she answers. "You _did_ go to school, didn't you? Or are you a self-educated man as well as a self-made one?"  
  
"In my day, the Scottish school system was far superior to the English one, and that's a fact," Richard replies, his voice low and even. He looks her in the eye. "French is reserved for the _elite_ …But as for knowledge gaps…How's your geometry? Trigonometry?"  
  
Mary glances away, her face growing warm at the blunt way he points out her deficiencies. The scenery out the window blurs past and seems to pull painfully at the edges of her eyes, and she must close them against the sight. Nevertheless, she musters her haughtiest voice.   
  
"What use do women like me have for higher mathematics?"   
  
"No more than I do publishing newspapers. Just because certain fields of study aren't useful doesn't mean they're not beneficial. There's a lot to be said for mastering concepts simply because you _can_. And shouldn't that be the point of being elite?"  
  
It's a funny sort of privilege, she realises as her eyes snap open, that deprives her of knowledge available to people who are beneath her. If she married Patrick, or the Duke of Crowborough, or Evelyn Napier, or any other man Mama sat her next to at dinner, she likely never would have even known this, or cared that she did not. Humiliating as it is to have her ignorance exposed, she's glad not to remain in the dark any longer. Glad her husband doesn't see her as less because of it, and that their child--her hand moves to rest on her stomach, properly nipped in by her corset--should it be a girl, will be entitled to so much more than an education designed to catch a certain type of husband. With her free hand, she covers Richard's which rests on her thigh.  
  
"So Lord Grantham learned his French at Eton," he says, weaving their fingers together, "did they teach him how to become a millionaire should he find himself without an inheritance?"  
  
"Well yes," Mary says, turning back to him, smirking as puzzlement at her remark etches itself in the lines of his face. "He came out with the necessary qualities to marry Mama and acquire hers."  
  
Richard chuckles softly, smoke puffing from his slightly parted lips. "And I married you."  
  
"To be your translator?" Mary quips, but Richard is no longer in the mood for banter, leaning in to kiss her instead.   
  
She gives him only a peck in return, almost at once pulling back from the bitter taste of tobacco on his lips. He looks a little askance at the brevity of the kiss and, oblivious, takes a long drag from the cigarette.   
  
"How did you plan a Parisian honeymoon, then?" Mary asks. "Or do we even have a hotel reservation?"  
  
"Miss Fields took care of everything."   
  
French isn't a skill Mary typically associated with secretaries, then she remembers the inimitable Miss Fields was a governess prior to working for Richard. "She conducts your international business, then?"  
  
"I don't have much. At present."  
  
"If only I'd known, you might have at least conducted our honeymoon business. I taught Anna quite passable French in six weeks, in case she meets a handsome Frenchman who wants to court her."  
  
"I'm not sure he'll care about her language mastery," Richard replies, and gives her hand a squeeze as he shifts on the seat, turning to brush his lips across her cheekbone. "I thought you'd enjoy having all the control by being the one who can communicate. My ignorance puts me entirely at your mercy, you realise?"  
  
"True…" Mary turns the idea over in her mind as Richard releases her hand to take her chin and turn her head for another attempt at a kiss. She smiles against his mouth, then says, "I could do all sorts of diabolical things, such as go to a restaurant and order you escargot."  
  
He leans back from her, an eyebrow raised. "I do know that's the dish with the snails. And if you think for a second that's enough to turn the cast iron stomach of a Scotsman, you have a lot to learn about my mother's cooking."  
  
Unable to stop a grimace, Mary turns from him again, cradling her forehead in her hand.  
  
"You're _not_ well," Richard says and, knowing he won't believe a mere reference to black puddings and haggis could have induced such a reaction, she admits his cigarette has exacerbated the nausea that began on the ferry. At once he tamps it out into the brass plated ashtray set into the arm of the bench. "For god's sake, Mary. Why didn't you say?"  
  
Leaning against the back of the seat, she gives a week smile. "It seems neither of us is very good at admitting our shortcomings."  
  
Richard does not grin back, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening with his frown as he studies her in concern and brushes his fingers over her aching forehead. "I'd prefer it if added to the list of mine isn't that I unwittingly let my wife suffer."  
  
"I don't think there's much you can do, unless you've aspirin in your briefcase.  
  
Abruptly Richard's hand leaves her, and he is on his feet, reaching for the shelf overhead. "But I always do."  
  
 _Of course he does._ "In case of hangovers?"  
  
Richard opens the case on the vacant seat. "In case of the inevitable gnashing of teeth the newspaper business brings."  
  
"Not that I don't appreciate your preparedness, but this is a pleasure trip, not a business one."  
  
"Take that," Richard says, the peremptory tone as he presses a pill into Mary's hand making her wonder for a moment if he's keeping something from her. But the throbbing in her temples pushes the thought out of her mind as suddenly as it came into it, and her focus shifts to Richard muttering that she needs something to drink and opening the door of the train compartment to flag down a passing attendant.   
  
"My wife needs--" He looks back over his shoulder at her, frowning. "How do I ask for a cup of tea?"  
  
"Heavens, I'm much too warm for tea."   
  
"Water, then," Richard snaps.   
  
Sighing, Mary opens her mouth to translate, this very basic French not coming to her readily in her state, but not before the bemused attendant repeats in heavily accented English. "Water? _Oui, monsieur._ "   
  
When the man has scurried off and Richard has closed the compartment door, Mary says, "I'll thank you not to take your communication frustrations out on me." She rolls the aspirin capsule between her thumb and forefinger This is all _your_ doing, after all."  
  
"The French honeymoon, or the pregnancy?" he asks--his tone, if not his words, apologetic--and resumes his seat beside her.   
  
"Both."  
  
"And just a moment ago you were taking all the credit for seducing me." His large hands sweep the underside of her breasts as he releases the top button of her ivory pinstriped traveling suit.   
  
"If you're plotting a seduction now," Mary says, swatting him away and shrinking back from him into the corner of the compartment, "you have an appalling sense of timing."  
  
"My timing had only to do with your remark that you were overly warm. You might feel better if you take off your jacket."   
  
"Oh. Yes."   
  
Mary undoes the rest of her buttons and allows him to help her draw her arms from the sleeves. Also at his encouragement she removes her hat, its absence at once relieving her head of the pressure of her hairpins under its weight. A moment later a knock at the door signals the return of the attendant with the water, goggling at Mary over Richard's shoulder when she thanks him in French.   
  
"He looked a little scandalised by my state of undress," she remarks when they are alone again, sips of water doing much to revive her even before the aspirin has a chance to do its work.   
  
"He's French. I rather doubt much scandalises him." Richard puts his arms about her and she willingly leans against him, tension ebbing from her as his left hand cradles her head, working soothing circles over her scalp with his fingertips, and his voice rumbles pleasantly through her. "And if it does, what do we care? We'll never see him again, once we arrive in Paris."  
  
"What do you think he imagines we've got up to?"  
  
"Headache cures."  
  
Mary tilts her head on his shoulder to look up at him. "It cures headaches?  
  
"Just to clarify we're talking about the same thing…The _it_ you refer to is sex, yes?"   
  
"Yes," she admits, not breaking eye contact; her cheeks grow warm again, but Richard grins.   
  
"I don't suppose you'd like to try it?"  
  
"Right here in the carriage? We're not even in a sleeper car."  
  
"As you discovered yesterday at the Ritz, beds are not a requirement."   
  
The heat in Mary's cheeks--and elsewhere--deepens with the memory of the passionate interlude they had on the desk, which resulted in a broken lamp.   
  
"And if privacy is your concern, a train's no more public than being under your father's roof during a house party."  
  
This argument, Mary must concede, is most persuasive; their risk of being caught that weekend at Downton was much greater, with more disastrous potential, than this. Before she can say so, Richard abruptly sits back from her.   
  
"I don't mean to pressure you. If you're not comfortable, or not up to it…"  
  
"Why not?" She gets up, her skirt brushing his trousers as she stands in front of him. "I can't read with a headache, and we've finished arguing, so we need some way to pass the time."  
  
Richard grasps her by the hips and pulls her to stand between his knees as they part on either side of her. "It's fortunate I'm aroused by that blasé demeanour. Less confident men than me might find their spirits dampened by your apparent lack of enthusiasm. But I know you. The less you say, the more you feel."  
"Perhaps _you_ ought to say a bit less."  
  
"I won't argue with that," he mumbles, tilting his face up to hers as his arms tighten about her waist to draw her down for a kiss.   
  
As their lips meet, Mary slides her hands over his chest, then inside his jacket to rest on his shoulders; with the sweep of his tongue into her mouth she clings to his neck as he embraces her even tighter, hoisting her onto the balls of her feet. She is not certain at first what he intends, but when one hand leaves her waist to clutch the front of her skirt, hoisting it up above her knees, and his fingers hook around her the back of her thigh to lift her leg, she realises he must mean for her to straddle his lap--fully clothed. Not quite what she imagined when he proposed a romantic interlude--but then again, she had no clearer idea about how lovemaking in a train would occur.   
  
Two days of marriage, it seems, are not enough to give her a much more complete grasp of sex than she has of higher mathematics.   
  
Though master it, she can. And will.   
  
With no little dubiousness and a great deal of awkwardness, she hoists up her skirt and petticoat and climbs onto his lap, grateful that Richard seems unaware of either. Her breasts come quite close to his face and he kisses them through her blouse, the heat of his breath touching her skin even through the silk and layers of fine linen undergarments. Grasping his shoulders, she rocks her hips against his in response, surprised at the heady feeling evoked even without the intimacy of being naked with him. Emboldened by the thought, she slides one hand down from his shoulder, over his chest until her fingers brush his arousal. She smiles at his sharp indrawn breath; when she slips her fingers beneath the fly to undo the first button, he mutters an exclamation that is muffled by her blouse.   
  
"What did you say?" she asks as she makes swift work of the other closures.   
  
"Something in a language you've ever heard."   
  
Mary's eyebrows go up at that--or perhaps, more accurately, they go up as warm fingers slip inside the opening of her drawers, finding with his usual precision her most sensitive place. She is not truly offended by the expletive; she probably ought to be, but then again, she is in the process of engaging in sexual intercourse with only thin partitions separating them from the other passengers and railway employees, and that doesn't offend her, either. On the contrary, the flush that races from deep inside to every extremity, the tips of her fingers and her cheeks, can only be attributed to a thrill of excitement at what they are doing.   
  
No language she's ever heard? Well, two can play at that game. After all, language is what got them started down this track in the first place.   
  
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she says.   
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
 _This is so ill-bred_ , she said--but she has no intention of playing the role of translator for Richard now. He gives her an excuse not to, anyway, entering her, and she must bite her lip against a cry. He grasps her hips and begins to pump into her, settling into a rhythm so rapid and frantic that she knows this encounter will be even briefer than he one on the desk. It differs from other times they've made love, too: the position gives her more control so that she feels the peaks of pleasure more acutely, yet the pace, that of a snatched moment, does not allow her to become so lost in the ebb and flow of physical sensation; she keeps her head, and desires to express what she feels in words--and in doing so, to prove Richard's earlier assessment of her wrong.   
  
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she repeats the French--because proving her husband wrong should not preclude teasing him, "et pourtant si merveilleux. Je suis si heureuse de t’avoir épousé, toi et tes origines modestes, et ta moralité douteuse, et ton affreux tweed, juste par amour."  
  
"Something about tweed and love?" Richard mutters between thrusts.   
  
_Dreadfully ill-bred, yet completely wonderful. I'm so happy I married you and your humble origins, and your dubious morals, and your tweed, for love._  
  
Then it's all a wordless cry whose meaning is perfectly plain to both of them as they arrive together at their destination, at what feels to Mary like the full speed of the locomotive. She clings to Richard with one hand, the other scrabbling overhead to clutch luggage rack at the sensation that she might be flung free of the carriage altogether.   
  
His hand, first stroking a fallen tendril back into her coiffure, then sweeping lightly across her brow, draws her back to him.   
  
"How's the headache?"   
  
Mary pauses to assess herself and, in her relief to feel as well as she did before the ferry ride, starts to tell him so--but at the last moment she stops, deciding that will likely go straight to his head.   
  
"Envolé," she answers-- _Cured_. "Si seulement nous pouvions déposer un brevet, les fabricants d’aspirine feraient faillite, et nous deviendrions encore plus riches que nous ne le sommes déjà."-- _If only we could patent it, we'd put the aspirin companies out of business and be even richer than we already are._  
  
"You're going to enjoy wielding this power you have over me even more than I anticipated, aren't you?"  
  
"If you'd known about my Bonapartean despotism, would you still have married me?"  
  
Richard laughs. " _Oui._ And much sooner than I did."  
  
"In that case," Mary says, rocking down in his lap and eliciting a little moan from him, "let's try another round of treatment. I simply _must_ be in tip-top shape for Paris."


End file.
